


Tragedy

by BlazingStarInInkyBlackness



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, Dark, Fucked Up, Insanity, Mad King Ryan Haywood, Murder, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 20:43:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14601312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlazingStarInInkyBlackness/pseuds/BlazingStarInInkyBlackness
Summary: In the new world tragedies were an everyday part of life. Ryan doesn't know how to deal with that until he suddenly does.





	Tragedy

There were many tragedies in the new world. Well, new was stretching it. Ryan stared out of the window onto the streets below. They were barren, great rends having been torn from explosions and

The skies had caved in, unleashing torrents of rain to pelt down on the unsuspecting creatures below. As if that wasn’t enough then there had been a drought. Six months without water, people killed each other after the first month. You’d think that as the number of people went down and resources therefore became better the people would have stopped.

But some of them had got a taste for it. Some of them had started to love the hunt, the kill. Lived to draw it out, slow and torturous before killing their prey. Ryan had met his fair share of those in his first few months, men and women who toyed with their fellow survivors as lions with mice. One of them had played Ryan like a violin.

Ryan had rushed to her beck and call, willing to do anything to keep his friend safe. Then she had told him to kill himself, had handed him the knife and had sat back to watch.

Ryan had walked out with blood coating him but he was alive. That was all that mattered.

Not long after that he’d met a tall man with a ginger beard and a smile that would light up the world. Ryan had stuck by him, helped him as much as he could. The man died trying to save Ryan. That night while Ryan sat by the fire weeping he wanted to die, wanted it to be over just so he didn’t have to do this, survive another death.

Months later he found two men, lovers who were willing to die for each other. One of them had tattoos curling around their arms and the other a British accent. They died bloody, clinging to each other in hope to survive. That night Ryan didn’t cry. He had nothing left.

For the next eighteen months he never travelled with someone else, refusing every offer. He just couldn’t lose someone. When Jeremy crossed his path something had changed in Ryan. He watched the man and learnt how he behaved, how he reacted.

One day a vindictive part of Ryan decided what he was going to do.

He brought Jeremy along, giving him the better food, more rest and did everything to make the man’s life good. Jeremy noticed and tried to refuse the help, tried to give it all to Ryan but the older man would always refuse.

Three months after they met Ryan vanished into the night. Jeremy searched for him diligently, following the path Ryan had left. He followed it until he couldn’t anymore. He broke down then, his friend having been ripped from him.

Then Ryan had emerged from the trees, had watched as Jeremy’s face turned into a picture of joy. Slitting the man’s throat, watching the blood spurt, watching Jeremy stare at him. It broke the final part of Ryan. He was no longer the man he used to be, no longer the Georgian man who had been hurt. He had changed into something much greater.

Ryan watched as Jeremy clawed at the air, terror and betrayal, sorrow and agony dancing across his face until he fell into the blood. Ryan watched as the man died in agony, knowing he had done it.

The joy, the adrenaline, that had coursed through him grew. It went from a one-time thing to constant. Every new traveller he came across he lured in and killed, brutally and slowly. It brightened something in the man which had been deadened since Gavin and Geoff, the third and fourth people he’d killed.

It brought back the joy he’d felt with Jack. But none of the terror of his second kill. But it did bring the same satisfaction of the first kill, the woman he had been played by for so long. As he watched his kills he was alive once more, buzzing with energy as his victim lost the same traits. He wasn’t just alive, he ruled life and death, he truly deserved the title of Mad King, for that was who he was. A ruler over life and death who was strong enough to do what no-one else would.

Something changed when he met Ray. The man was young and feisty, refusing to fall for Ryan’s traps. If Ryan offered something Ray would take it and give nothing back, too jaded to care. It intrigued Ryan. Nothing had done that for a while.

But the game was the game.

 

Ryan looked down at the boy. A life was a beautiful thing, taking it a terrible thing but taking this one would be a tragedy. Ryan traced one of the tear tracks of the boy who was sobbing gently. There had been so many tragedies, his life had gone, vanished in the initial sweep of water. The boy looked up at him with tears balancing on his eyelashes.

“Make it quick.” he whispered, no strength behind the voice. Ryan frowned at that, normally his prey put up a fight. He reached for the knife in his pocket but paused as the boy whimpered slightly.

There had been so many tragedies in this world, his work, his home, his family, everyone who had ever meant anything to him was dead. Had died terrible deaths, bloody or slow while they gasped for water that wouldn’t come or screamed into the water that was invading their throats.

Ryan wondered how many tragedies the kid had suffered, how many people he’d lost. Ryan remembered the picture he always kept close, the boy with a smile like the sun and more freckles than Ryan could count. He hadn’t missed how Ray stared at the picture. Far more than friendship. So he had lost, he had loved and lost as everyone had.

A tragedy. A real tragedy, that was their lives now. But here Ryan was, with the change to stop one.

Liquid slowly dropped to the floor, as the heavens opened once more. The sky rumbled, as if in anger. Ryan pressed a gentle kiss to Ray’s forehead, slowly kneeling so they were both on the floor. Ray put up no fight and just lay there as Ryan placed him on the ground. He looked serene, as if he’d forgotten every evil in this damned world.

Ryan slowly pulled out the knife, hearing the dead flesh release it.

“Sorry kid.” Ryan talked down to the man, the body of the man. “If I’d met you before all this, maybe. But we’ve all got our tragedies.”

And, in the apocalypse, what was one more?


End file.
